


Sunggyu's Moving Castle

by sissynecks



Category: Infinite (Band), K-pop
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 13:43:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sissynecks/pseuds/sissynecks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Howl's Moving Castle AU - Infinitized!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunggyu's Moving Castle

**Author's Note:**

> Might be a while before I find the inspiration to continue writing this, but there are at least five parts planned!

**PART ONE**

“I heard he steals girls’ hearts,” is the talk on the street that finds its way into the shop. “Takes their souls, saves them for later.”

“Eats them while keeping the women under lock and key.”

One of the girls looks slyly over at Dongwoo working by the window. “But you might need to watch out most of all,” she says to him. “Wizard Gyu only takes the _purest_ of hearts.”

Unremarkable, simple Dongwoo, still working dutifully in his parents’ hat shop long after his sisters have married and gone, runs his fingers over trailing ends of ribbon and brooches dripping with jewels. It’s the best he has to offer, he thinks.

 

Tucked away in the mist, Wizard Gyu’s castle doesn’t ever seem to stay in one place. The townspeople claim this to be true, setting curfews in the evening and warning young girls against traveling alone, even though no one ever goes into the Wastes and, daily, the king’s propaganda falls from the sky.

If Dongwoo strains to listen after closing up shop, he thinks he can almost hear the groaning, heaving boiler of Sunggyu’s moving castle making its way, slowly along the hills, just outside of town.

~*~

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” says Sunggyu the first time he and Dongwoo meet, and Dongwoo almost faints.

The bald, wrinkled cat he came upon in the alleyway goes to wrap itself around Sunggyu’s feet, but Sunggyu just glares, his eyes angry slits.

“I’m sorry,” Dongwoo says in horror, tripping over himself. “I didn’t know it was yours—I’ve heard so much about you—”

“Yeah?” says Sunggyu, and comes so close Dongwoo could just lift a hand and be touching Sunggyu’s chest, where a large green jewel hangs from his neck. Dongwoo staggers a little, and Sunggyu makes a face like he’s not impressed. Well, Dongwoo thinks and closes his eyes, eat your heart out. 

Then the cat screeches from behind them, and Sunggyu whips around. His eyes narrow even further and he has Dongwoo’s wrist in a firm grip, dry and commanding. He says, “I’m being chased. Walk with me.”

Dongwoo squeaks, but then they’re running, swept up in a sudden gust of autumn wind. Sunggyu has Dongwoo’s arm linked in his as they fly above the cobbled streets, the rooftops of the market. Beneath them, their pursuers’ forms groan and convulse obscenely.

“I didn’t mean to get you involved,” Sunggyu says. He smiles at Dongwoo gaping in the air and takes his hand. “Relax. Just keep walking.”

They glide along above town with their feet skipping and brushing the shingled rooftops. “Don’t be scared,” Sunggyu tells Dongwoo, sounding just as breathless as Dongwoo feels, right now, as if his story is just beginning.

 

“Are you an angel or something?” Woohyun says when Dongwoo comes downstairs to the bakery. “Flying down onto the terrace like that?” Hoards of girls are swarming outside in the shop still, and Woohyun winks and throws a few hearts to appease them.

“I think I might be dreaming,” says Dongwoo.

“Was it Wizard Sunggyu?” Woohyun asks. “You have to be more careful, knowing you. You’d probably go shopping in the market and end up right at his doorstep.”

“He was really nice,” Dongwoo says. He thinks of Sunggyu’s bangs falling into his eyes and a smile already warm and familiar.

Woohyun grins. “Oh, so you’ve already had your heart stolen, huh?”

The crowds outside start to grow restless, but when Dongwoo makes to go, Woohyun’s handsome face grows serious. He stands and tugs down the ends of his pink apron, and Dongwoo recalls the same look on his face when Dongwoo told Woohyun he would stay. “Hyung,” he says, and looks helpless. “Are you _really_ going to work in the hat shop for the rest of your life?”

“My dad really loves the shop,” Dongwoo says, “and now that he’s in the restaurant business…”

“I’m asking if you really want to take over the shop because you like to make hats,” says Woohyun, as he’s being dragged back out to the counters. Dongwoo waves goodbye resignedly, and Woohyun shouts back at him, “ _You_ decide what you want to be!”

 

The door to the shop opens late that night as Dongwoo is cleaning up, even though he swears he had locked it.

“So you sell _hats_ ,” says the tall man who walks in, unimpressed. He has a youthful face and a generous smile, which he aims at Dongwoo even as his eyes narrow. “I wonder what that’s like.”

“The store’s closed,” says Dongwoo. “You can come by tomorrow morning, if you’d like—”

Suddenly, in a forceful rush of impatience, the man is right in front of Dongwoo, pushing him back against the front counter. “Do you know who I am?” he asks, voice rising. “I’m Sungyeol—Wizard of the Wastes.” With a growing smile he adds, “And you’re going to say hi to Sunggyu for me.”

~*~

This is how Dongwoo finds himself in the Wastes, searching in vain for Sunggyu’s castle, wherever it might be wandering that day. He shivers in his cardigan and wonders how he’s going to give up Sunggyu to Sungyeol when all he knows through town gossip is that Sunggyu only shows himself to people he likes. Dongwoo isn’t sure what to think of that.

He walks along the hills and cliffs of the Waste until he comes along a scarecrow, bouncing along on a single stick with a turnip for a head and a fedora perched atop it. The letter _L_ is embroidered on the front pocket of its vest. 

Dongwoo finds he is no longer surprised at anything concerning magic. “Hello,” he says. “Would you happen to know where Wizard Sunggyu is?”

Turnip Head cocks its head slightly, silently.

“You’re magic, aren’t you? I like your vest.”

It abruptly turns and bounds away. Dongwoo starts feeling lonely again until suddenly, preceded by the wheezing of smoke vents and the clanking of hodge-podged parts, Sunggyu’s moving castle comes up the hill, led by Turnip Head.

Dongwoo yells in triumph and swings up onto the tiny door at the very bottom of the monstrous metal beast, waving to Turnip Head at the bottom of the hill. “Thank you, L! Good luck! I’ll be back!”

 

Inside is not what Dongwoo would have expected of a wizard’s castle. On the main floor, he trips over books fallen from their towering stacks on tables that are strewn with junk and blanketed under grime and dust. Dongwoo sneezes.

“Hey,” says a voice.

Dongwoo jumps; he hadn’t noticed anyone else in the room. He crouches low and eventually whispers back, “Hello.”

“Over here. By the hearth.”

Dongwoo creeps over in the darkness and gratefully accepts the warmth by the glowing fire. He pulls up a wooden chair and places his hands closer to the flame—which blinks at him, and has a wide, sharp grin. “Some kind of curse you’ve got there, huh?” it says, gleefully. “Can’t be lifted until some kind of requirement is fulfilled.”

Dongwoo stares and pokes through the talking flame with an iron poker. “Fire…is…talking…”

“And you can’t tell it to other people. Stop that.”

“Are you…Sunggyu?”

The fire scoffs, and a few embers spit out. “I’m _Hoya_. Evil spirit? Hi, I run this castle. Not Wizard Sunggyu.”

Dongwoo puts on an impressed look at the mention of ‘evil’. “Then can you dispel the curse on me?” he asks, though he thinks that might be cheating.

“Of course,” Hoya says. “It’s easy. But if you want me to do that, you’ll have to set me free first. I’m bound here by Sunggyu’s magic.”

“Does this mean I’m making a deal with a devil?” Dongwoo laughs. “How can I know you’ll keep your promise?”

Hoya’s grin is toothy and wide. “Devils don’t make promises.”

~*~

There’s a _click_ from behind Dongwoo and a ringing of a bell overhead the door from which he entered. There’s a rumbling of steps overhead, and another figure comes down another flight of stairs into the room, a young thin boy with delicate features and wide eyes. He spares one confused look at Dongwoo sitting by the fire, then fumbles with a cape around his shoulders. Dongwoo’s jaw drops when the boy throws on the hood and pops out disguised as a bearded old man.

He clears his throat before he answers the door, and his voice is a high lilt hid by mock gruffness. “Well, well,” the boy-turned-man says. “The sun is already high in the sky and here is the town mayor.”

“Is Master Jenkins home?” the visitor asks. Dongwoo’s jaw is still hanging open when he peers out the front door and gone are the Wastelands; now they’re looking out into the bustling town of Calgary.

“My master is away. I’ll pass your message onto him, thank you.”

The door closes, and the boy opens the scroll, reads aloud to the rest of the room: “…royal order for all wizards, magicians, and witches to join the war. Denial is not accepted.” He rolls his eyes and throws off the hood delicately, focusing his attention and glare back onto Dongwoo. “Who are you?”

Dongwoo finally shuts his mouth, then says quickly, “Hoya let me in.”

“I did not!” Hoya shouts indignantly, his flame flaring up. “He came in from the Wastes!”

“Then are you a wizard?” the boy asks suspiciously.

“He wouldn’t be able to come in then, you know that.” The doorbell rings again and Hoya adds, “It’s Harbor town again.”

The boy fulfills two more orders at the door, one in Kingsbury, and Dongwoo hovers behind the boy and almost falls out of the castle, he’s so in awe.

“Be quiet!” the boy snaps, and yanks Dongwoo back in the door by the sleeve of his shirt. “And stop messing around—what are you even doing here?”

“This is a magic castle, isn’t it?” Dongwoo asks, and his obvious wonder softens the lines of the boy’s rigid shoulders. “Where does the black mark lead to?”

He points to the dial above that signifies where each door opens to; only the black mark on the bottom remains ominous, untouched. The boy shrugs. “Only Wizard Sunggyu knows. I’m hungry, I need to go out and get breakfast.”

“I can make us some,” Dongwoo offers brightly, gesturing to the basket of eggs and bacon lying by the hearth.

“Only Sunggyu can control Hoya,” the boy says.

“He’s right,” says Hoya. “I hate cooking.”

 

The dial eventually swings to black. Dongwoo looks up, and the door opens wide into a black abyss of dark sky and a ground unseen. Wizard Sunggyu staggers in, his cloak thrown over his shoulders, slightly burned at the bottom.

Dongwoo’s mouth opens as he watches Sunggyu cross the room slowly, his head bowed low. Dongwoo realizes he is currently standing in Wizard Sunggyu’s kitchen, cooking breakfast. Hoya growls at him irritably, “I’ll burn your bacon!”

At this, Sunggyu’s head snaps up. His eyes roam uninterestedly over Dongwoo and his frying pan, as if he doesn’t recognize him, but then his smile turns smug and he says to Hoya, “You’re being strangely subservient today.”

“ _He’s_ evil,” says Hoya, flames simmering maliciously when Dongwoo reaches for another slice of bacon.

“Welcome back, hyung,” pipes up the boy. “You have a letter from the king, as well as Jenkins and Pendragon.”

But Sunggyu just looks to Dongwoo, his face carefully blank. “What are you doing here?” he asks.

“I’m here to help you clean,” says Dongwoo brightly, having desperately looked around the room for a bright idea. “It’s a mess in here, if you haven’t noticed. Hoya hired me.”

Sunggyu turns to Sungjong and takes the letter from him. He then gently pushes Dongwoo aside and takes the pan for himself. “Give it to me. Pass the eggs.”

Sungjong clears enough of the table off so he can make three place settings. Sunggyu places servings of eggs and bacon for them all, and takes his seat next to Dongwoo. His mood seems to be considerably lightened, but he throws occasional, inscrutable looks towards Dongwoo when he thinks Dongwoo isn’t looking.

“What’s that in your pocket?” he asks suddenly.

Before Dongwoo can react, Sunggyu’s hand snakes into his back pocket, delicately, and retrieves a slip of paper Dongwoo hasn’t seen before.

Sungjong leans over the table to get a better look, and exclaims, “It’s a spell! Isn’t it, hyung?”

Sunggyu’s eyes are narrowed into slits. He reads the message on the paper to himself, throws a look at Dongwoo, then abruptly gets up from the table. The paper explodes into burnt shreds behind him.

Sunggyu bends down to where Hoya is burning in the fireplace. “Move the castle another 30 miles north.” He sweeps his cloak up and starts heading up the stairs without a look back at bewildered Dongwoo behind him. “And send hot water up to the bathroom!”

When Dongwoo turns to Sungjong, Sungjong shrugs. “He likes taking baths.”

~*~

**END OF PART ONE**


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